Perspectives

Introducing the Competitive Esports Program at Cogswell College

Pulsing, multicolored neon lights illuminate faces gripped in dark concentration.The staccato of keyboard presses punctuate the din while stunted phrases are spoken in urgent monotone.Excitement crescendos as opposing teams dance frenetically in virtual combat. Opposing players flicker from existence as they anxiously wait to respawn while their compatriots claw towards the winning objective. Suddenly the crowd erupts with a guttural roar as an intrepid esports gladiator rains down digital doom, eliminating her opponents with a crushing blow.

Image source: tespa.org

This is our competitive esports program at Cogswell. Our mission is to bring awareness to esports by creating and promoting a close community focused on competing at the highest levels of collegiate esports while achieving academic excellence. The esports program consists of the esports club which gathers and develops a steady pool of student esports enthusiasts who compete for the opportunity to be a part of Cogswell’s collegiate esports teams.

We are a Tespa chapter and compete in national and local tournaments in Overwatch, League of Legends, Heroes of the Storm, Hearthstone and other popular esports video games.

Our ultimate goal for this esports program is to bring honor and digital glory to our beloved school and share our accomplishments with the entire Cogswell and esports community.

Is there a relationship between the team roles in esports vs. team roles in game development?

Roles in the esports program are like the positions of a professional sports team. For example, you may have a person “shot-calling” or acting like an NFL quarterback who sees the big picture and directs the team’s efforts based on the situation. You may have a person playing as a “tank” who is there to “block” the opposing team’s progress, akin to an NFL lineman. A game development team also has roles and responsibilities. For example, you have artists who create the visuals or programmers who code game features and functionality. Members of esports and game development teams have to work together to achieve objectives and ultimately accomplish a final goal. In esports, it’s winning the match. In game development, it is successfully completing and releasing a game. The biggest commonality between the two however are the non-technical or “soft skills” required for any team to be successful.

Before we dive into what “soft skills” are, let’s understand what technical or “hard” skills are.Technical skills refer to knowledge required to perform specific tasks. They can be quantified, measured and taught. In esports games, we can track and measure these skills such as a player’s K/D (kill/death) ratio, damage output or farming (resource gathering). In game development, we look at someone’s ability to create game-ready art assets such as 3D models and texture maps or the efficiency and stability of someone’s programming code. Without technical skills, neither an esports competitor nor a game developer would be able to perform.

On the other hand, “soft” or non-technical skills refer to more subjective, less quantifiable skills that are harder to teach such as communication, teamwork and the ability to stay composed under extreme pressure. In esports, a team can lose if its superstar players don’t communicate well or go into a temper tantrums (aka “tilt”) when things don’t go their way. In a development team, issues like miscommunication can cause inefficiencies, loss of productivity, personnel conflicts, missed deadlines and jeopardize production. Both esports and game development require people with diverse skill sets and personalities to collaborate harmoniously to perform at a level that exceeds individual efforts. Therefore “soft skills” are the key factors that determine the success of any esports games or dev team.

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MEET OUR CONTRIBUTORS

Bobbi Makani

Bobbi leads Cogswell's Business degree programs. Her areas of expertise include social innovation, entrepreneurship, strategic business development, marketing, international business and quantitative methods. She has started and co-founded several ventures in the areas of food service, retail, and [...]

Brian Shepard

Dr. Brian Shepard, President and CAO, has more than thirty years of collegiate teaching and administration experience, including four years as the Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs and Professor of Audio Design Practice in the USC Iovine and Young Academy for Arts, Technology and the [...]

Christian Sasso

Chris is the founder of Heroic Arcade, a studio that won Best in Show at the Project Tango App Contest with WeR Cubed, an augmented reality 3D puzzle game playable on Google Tango devices. He is the former Senior Embedded Developer at Nest Labs and Senior Software Engineer at Cisco Systems. Chris [...]

Daniel Codella

In addition to being a former Cogswell student, Daniel is a writer and marketer with a passion for clever content. When he's not helping people and brands share their stories, he enjoys traveling, writing music, and playing Bocce ball. Twitter: [...]

Cogswell Guest

From time to time, Cogswell invites guests to post contributions to Perspectives. Their biographical information can be found on the contributed [...]

Isabell Fearnsby

As a professional oil painter and teacher, Isabell is known for her creative vision and love of collaboration. She is a natural teacher and enjoys fostering enthusiasm, curiosity and mastery of the subject matter in her students. She has over 20 years teaching experience in the US and abroad, is [...]

Jerome Solomon

Jerome Solomon is Dean of the College at Cogswell. Jerome has 17 years of industry experience in Hollywood. He worked at Industrial Light and Magic, DreamWorks Animation, Electronic Arts, and Rhythm & Hues Studios. During his career, he received film credits on Avatar, Madagascar, Shrek 2, [...]

John Duhring

John has been a founding team member at seven startups, generating successful exits to Borland, 5th Generation Systems, EMC and AOL. He has applied technology to learning at Prentice-Hall, Apple, Dow Jones and for Stanford’s Professional Publishing Courses. As the Director of Communications and [...]

Julius Dobos

Julius brings over two decades of professional experience as an award-winning composer of electronic and film music, sound synthesist, sound designer and audio engineer to Cogswell's Digital Audio Technology Department, as Distinguished Lecturer. At Cogswell, he teaches a wide range of audio- and [...]

Mira Nikolic

Mira brings 17+ years of feature animation industry experience and passion for teaching computer graphics to future technical directors and technical artists. She serves as Assistant Professor in the Digital Arts and Animation program at Cogswell College. She worked at Disney Feature Animation, [...]

Mohan Shah

As Professor and Program Director for Engineering, Mohan brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to Cogswell. He has more than 15 years of software industry experience leading software development and electrical engineering teams at Yodlee, Wells Fargo, CSI and NASA. Mohan is equally [...]

Monica Cappiello

Monica brings over 8 years of higher education experience to Cogswell, including roles such as Dean of Academic Affairs and Director of Media. Prior to that, she worked over 8 years in multiple studios such as Red Giant, Mendez Foundation, Pixellex Studios and PBS. Several works have been awarded [...]

Nancy Harrison

Nancy began her career as an illustrator like many do - crayoning on walls. Back then it was considered a bad habit, now she gets paid for it. She has somehow managed to doodle her way into a great career. In addition to her role at Cogswell as Adjunct Professor, her work has been published in [...]

Reid Winfrey

Reid Winfrey, Associate Professor of Digital Arts and Animation at Cogswell. A graduate of the University of California at Davis and San Jose State University, he holds a Master of Fine Arts Degree in Printmaking and Pictorial Arts. He has presented at conferences and museums on topics ranging from [...]

Robert Steinberg

Robert Steinberg brings over 30 years of marketing and executive management experience to Cogswell’s Business Administration program. A former co-founder and President of a Human-Machine Interface (HMI) device and Defense systems company for over 18 years, he led the company to prominence [...]

Rosie Katz

Rosie Katz went to Cogswell College where she graduated with a B.A. in Computer Video Imaging with a Concentration in Character Animation. After spending a couple years as a Tools Tester at Electronic Arts, she began her design career working on such notable franchises as Dead Space and Call of [...]

Evan Skolnick

With over 25 years of combined story and game development experience at world-class entertainment companies such as Marvel, Activision, Telltale and Lucasfilm, Evan Skolnick brings a unique perspective to narrative experiences in the games we play. He has imparted core storytelling techniques and [...]

Tamryn Spruill

Tamryn Spruill takes the reigns as Editor-In-Chief at SB Nation’s Swish Appeal after rising through the ranks at Golden State of Mind: first, as a Contributing Writer/Editor, and then as Associate Editor of Editorial Content. She has been a fan of women’s basketball since the 1996 inception of [...]

Timothy Duncan

Dr. Timothy Duncan is an award-winning composer, performer and educator who is equally at home working with technology and with traditional media. He has composed and performed a body of new music compositions as well as created visual pieces and music for modern dance that have brought him [...]